Chapter 17

The Striker lay in wait.

Beanie had a thin film of sweat on his upper lip as his watched the gunship slide silently towards his position. It felt a little odd watching it as if it was upside down in relation to him. He had pinpointed the two spots he was to hit and the targeting system had them locked.

There was no way he would miss the ship from the distance they were from it. He waited patiently. He was an old hand at controlling his impulses, even if he found it nerve-wracking.

“Now, Beanie,” Chris said softly, as his eyes were also glued to the ship.

Beanie hit the two buttons. They all watched as the two, low yield torpedoes streaked away. The target would barely have time to register that they were being fired upon before the ordinance hit. Chris eased the Striker forward to clear the asteroid that partially hid them. They would be shielded from any debris as they looped around the asteroid and came up to the rear of the ship they had fired upon.

As the Pirate’s ship once again came into view, the team was shocked to see the damage. “Bloody hell!” Beanie said softly. His eyes were wide and the shock hit him hard. The torpedos were supposed to put a few holes in the ship near the engines. However, the explosions they had caused were devastating.

The ship had its fore engines running, as it was still slowing when the biggest explosion ripped the aft engines off. The crew of the Striker could see that the engines had been blown clear of the ship. All sorts of debris were expelled from the compartments that were ripped open to vacuum.

The explosion had shaken the ship and pushed the aft end down. The fore explosion had been delayed. When it happened, it ripped the top engine free of the ship. The other two engines had shut down after the first explosion.

The second smaller explosion countered some the motion created by the rear explosion. It did slow the ship from the extra added speed but it hadn’t regained its original trajectory. It was now trying to spin end for end as it continued in a forward motion.

“Shit,” Darla said. “Chris, if anyone survived that they won’t be alive for much longer. The computer projects that in about fifteen minutes it’s going to have a run in with a small group of asteroids that are now in their path.”

“Kay, how soon can we blink?” Aaron asked his vambrace.

“One minute. It’s not going to be easy either. I suggest you all crouch down in a tight group and hold onto each other. You may not have gravity or air, so make sure you seal your suits,” Kay suggested. They quickly sealed their suits and arranged themselves as she suggested. “Now,” she said.

The six enforcers found themselves tumbling in a small room. Aaron hit the wall with his back as he released his friends. They all threw their arms out to grab whatever they could. Once they had righted themselves, Kola headed for the door and found that it slipped open. They still had air pressure on both sides even if the gravity was gone.

Aaron used a spell to propel him through the door. He told the others to latch on to him and then they headed straight to the bridge. They found their first body in the second hallway. His head had smashed into something and the result wasn’t pretty. Several of his limbs also hung at odd angles.

Tale used a spell to push away the blood and whatever else it was that was floating in the air, so that they didn’t get covered in the crap. Aaron steered them down the next hall towards the bridge. Kola dropped a spell on the door and it slid open.

Aaron peered in careful and then signalled the others to follow. Ten people were on the bridge. Six were strapped in but the other four were floating. They each headed to a person and checked for vitals. “This one’s alive,” Que said into her mike. She dropped an immobilisation spell on the moaning man and then a healing spell.

Bindy told them, “I’ve got a live one too.” Hers was unconscious. She then used the same spells as Que had.

“Dead,” Michel said and he left the man floating as he moved on to the next. He heard Aaron say that his was dead too and then Tale said the ‘D’ word. Four of the people who had been strapped in were alive. Two were semi-conscious but the others were out cold.

The floater that Tale inspected was alive. He had smashed into something and blood still dripped from his carved-up face. She dropped the healing spells on the man and then immobilised him.

“Aaron, there are six life signs on the level below this one,” Kay told him.

“Bindy, let’s unstrap this lot and you and the girls blink them back to the Striker,” Aaron told her.

The three women agreed and once they had five people encased in their arms and shielded, Jax helped Bindy blink the group to their ship. Beanie and Darla met them in the infirmary to help them get the people onto beds. Bindy made sure they each had a cuff on and spelled the cuff to not let them off the bed until they were ready to move them to a cell.

Aaron, Michel and Kola headed off the bridge to find a way to the level where Kay said there were life signs. “How long?” Kola asked Aaden as they sped down a hall, thanks to the spell.

“About six minutes,” Aaron said grimly.

“Can we change the direction of the ship?” Kola asked.

“Not soon enough to do any good and we’ve used a lot of magic,” Michel said. “Physics is a bitch, even for magicians.”

Kola understood and then pointed, “The lift shaft is open and empty.” They headed to it, reoriented and floated down to the level they wanted.

“Second door on your right, Aaron,” Kay told him. Aaron slowed them and Kola spelled the door to open as it was still locked. It took the three men a couple of moments to take in the scene.

“Sick fucks,” Michel breathed out. Three women and a man were strapped naked to the walls of the room and covered in welts and ripped skin, from a bar-tipped whip. Large bruises and bite marks on their torsos and faces indicated that they had been roughly treated.

Two fair-skinned women were tied onto the huge beds. One face down the other face-up. They were covered in bruises from rough handling, bite marks that bled and what looked like marks from a belt. It was evident that all of the victims had been well used sexually.

The men believed that the majority of the wounds they suffered had been inflicted by the other four men in the room and possibly others going by the stains on the sheets. The other four men were all floating, and they were unconscious or dead.

Two of the men were only recognisable as men because of what hung between their legs. It looked like some great force had tossed them around the room and smashed them into every surface possible. The other two must have been able to grab onto something, probably the tied down women before they were tossed around. Only one of the floaters was alive.

They quickly found the six people that were hanging onto life and dropped healing spells on them. Que would use stronger spells and Immo, once they got them to the ship. Using their magic, they released the bonds on those restrained and alive. The chains had cut into their limbs cruelly and several of them had broken bones.

The young woman who was face-up on the bed had died. It looked as if she had been crushed and had her head bashed in. When Michel examined her, he felt she had died because of the man, who had been using her at the time of the explosions had tried to hold onto her.

The men immobilised the bodies and gathered them into a group as they had done for the women. Just as they were about to blink, two men dressed as guards’ swum into the room. They pointed pistols at the group. “Release the Vezir now,” one of them yelled at the men.

Arron silently told Kay to blink them.

Aaron barely registered that a shot had been fired at them as they blinked.

He felt gravity pulling on him and instinctively bent his knees to absorb the impact. They had appeared in the infirmary several centimetres above the floor. Michel and Kola also felt the pull and they prepared for the landing as best they could.

Because they had immobilised and bound the prisoners together, it helped the men land. The prisoners were stiff and the protection spell on them had them landing softly on their feet. Once stable on their feet, Michel released his spell from each of the prisoners individually. The boys soon had them on beds, cuffed and spelled to stay put. The short, obese man needed a levitation spell to get him on the bed.

Aaron called Chris, while he looked at the grim faces of the other exhausted men, “Any chance we can go back?”

Chris replied, “No, sorry, the ship is just space junk. It broke up when it smashed into the group of small asteroids barely ten seconds after the ship registered that you were back here on the ship. Darla is monitoring them, as several of the asteroids and some of the chunks of the ship have been shot into space towards Sheldon’s orbit. Most of it should burn up in the atmosphere if it makes it to the planet.”

“I think we have a Vezir, whoever the fat-fuck is. Two guards went to stop us as we blinked,” Aaron told Chris. Aaron was sorry that he didn’t have time to rescue them but they had run out of time and he knew it. As it was, they had pushed their luck.

He spoke to Kay silently, ‘Why didn’t you warn us about the guards?’

‘Sorry, master, none of the cameras or sensors worked in that hall or the adjoining rooms. I found the others because of the cameras in that room. I also located five other bodies but they were scatted throughout the ship and none of them were showing signs of life or normal body temperatures. If they were alive, you wouldn’t have been able to reach them,’ Kay informed him sadly.

Aaron thanked her as he went to find Bindy; he needed a hug.

Aaron found Bindy in the other treatment room.

As soon as she felt him enter the room, she headed for his arms. They hugged tightly and were just thankful to be alive. Aaron asked Que over Bindy’s head, “How are the crew?”

“They will survive. I hit them all with Immo. They are breathing better and healing. They will take time to recover fully but their bones are back where they belong and the damaged organs are repairing to my satisfaction. They will be very sore and sorry for themselves when they wake. The explosions ready threw them around.”

“We have six more for you. The fat bloke is an Iranian Vezir, so make sure he survives, as he needs to tell us what is going on. The others have all been sexually abused and they were chained during the explosions so their wrists and ankles may need extra attention.”

Que nodded and went to see the new survivors. Bindy tugged on Aaron’s arm and walked him over to one of the beds. “This bloke isn’t part of the crew. I even know who he is. Major Carmichael and Prince Rashid will be pleased when they find out we have him.”

Aaron looked down at the man. One side of his face was still swollen and the pink streaks of healed skin looked odd on his darker complexion. It looked like he’d crushed his cheek but Que had repaired the bone under the swelling, time would heal the rest.

Aaron then said, “Damn! Mirza Pathan Merat. He is the Iranian Ambassador to UNSEC. What’s the bet that it is his dad, Vezir Fiaz Merat, is in the other room?”

“Big fat bloke with the same big nose and one eyebrow?” Bindy asked. Aaron grinned at her. “Damn, what a score. It’s a shame the bloody ship broke up. If they had any incriminating evidence it’s now scattered all over the system,” Bindy said vexedly.

“Not quite,” Chris said as he entered the room. “The computer had pinpointed the location of the black box and Beanie went for a walk to get it. Imagine his surprise when he found a safe in the same console.”